Well i popped out in the garden last night about 11'ish, and i thought great, some clear sky and a few stars right up above me.

So i ran in dragged all my tackle out, didn't bother to align anything thought I'll just point at it,and would you believe it the clouds came over all within 20 mins. I was knackered by the time I threw everything back upstairs, and no luck tonight next door neighbour had security light on all night.

Then when it looked as if it was going to rain, I had to bundle it all into the shed.

But by 10:30 it was looking good, so I got it set up again, and was ready to polar align on Polaris as soon as I could see it. After Sync-ing on Vega, I had the Ring Nebula in the field very quickly, and then had about 20 minutes before the clouds rolled in.But that was sufficient for my test:

You had more luck than i did Ross...I too anticipated the gap in the clouds & was out at 22.00 letting my scope cool down before attempting anything. Managed to see polaris & align myself. Got my Saturn in my eyepiece & proceeded to swap out the EP for the moded webcam... I only had a corner of saturn (blurry image on the CCD) then totally lost Saturn meaning my polar alignment was off. By the time i recovered it back, the cloud had run back in & the battery driving the GOTO system died.I got the distinct feeling that it wasnt to be my night.Undeterred im ready for the next gap in the clouds!!!!

Ask Mike Schaffel at our next meeting - he has a funny story about it!

When you remove the small cap, place it over the other "bump" for storage.And with it removed you have a stop-down mask to reduce the aperture of your 'scope when viewing the very bright Moon or doing solar projection.Or some users stick AstroSolar film over the back of the hole to make a safe solar-viewing filter.

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